


The Most Drawn-Out Game of Good News, Bad News

by isellys



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6799612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isellys/pseuds/isellys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a beautiful day, a hangover, and getting punched in the face.</p><p>(A.K.A., T'Chucky: The Romcom.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Drawn-Out Game of Good News, Bad News

**Author's Note:**

> my response to this movie, which basically felt like being punched repeatedly in the chest, is to romcom the shit out of it. i love this crack ship let's make it happen

The sky is beautiful; blue and free of clouds in a way that usually means one will mysteriously find its way on top of Bucky’s head and dump a lake’s worth of rain on him before disappearing again, leaving him in a drenched sweatshirt and soggy shoes. Which, in addition to his brain-numbing, gut-twisting hangover, would just make his day. Bucky has long accepted that he probably did something ridiculously bad in a past life (like assassinate a president or kick five puppies) and is now paying for it by having silly little misfortunes dumped on him at random whenever someone up in the cosmic kingdom feels like having a laugh. So when the weather is better than it has any right to be on a day he’s just recovering from a hangover—warm enough to go for a light jacket instead of a coat, with the occasional soothing breeze—Bucky expects that he will suddenly lose the keys to the flat, get hit by some rotten casserole someone decided to chuck out the window, or discover that a cat has peed in his laundry.

None of these things happen.

What happens, instead, is Bucky bites into a plum he’s just bought, and a rough voice shouts, “ _You!_ ”

A guy walks towards him. Or, more accurately, a guy stomps towards him—an unfairly gorgeous guy in a shirt that’s tight but not _too_ tight, brows furrowed and eyes sharp and alight with the kind of fervency that for one blissful second makes Bucky think that he’s slipped into a dream where random hot guys come up to him while he’s buying fruit and just—

He doesn’t get to finish that train of thought, because the guy punches him in the face.

Bucky is stunned, but also, he just got punched. In a move that has a little voice in his head telling him that Steve is a _terrible_ influence, Bucky recovers and punches back. He knows how hard he punches. This guy is definitely going down.

Except the guy catches Bucky’s punch and uses his momentum to pull him forwards to the ground before twisting a leg behind Bucky’s knee and drops him. He faintly recalls Natasha first using the same move on him during her judo phase; Bucky hits the fucking concrete.

He jumps back up, elbowing the guy in the stomach on the way, and he is double-kicked with choreographic perfection.

“I give, I give! Jesus, what the fuck,” he gasps out when he’s caught his breath after falling embarrassingly on his ass. He looks up; the guy is no less gorgeous after appearing out of nowhere and going The Bride on Bucky’s unsuspecting person (are those eyelashes _real_? How do you get skin to _glow_ like that? What is that _mouth_?) but also, now that Bucky has the time to really process it, the fire in his eyes is not unbridled passion but rage. So this time they sent an angel to whoop his ass for his earlier incarnation’s sins. Okay. He can live with that.

“You told me you would finish what you started,” says the angel. He has an accent. Heaven has a West Africa office. “So here I am today, as you asked me to be.”

He gapes.

“I’m sorry, I asked you what now?”

The guy narrows his eyes.

“…I did not believe your friend when he said you were ‘way out of your head’. It appears he was telling the truth. I have to say your coordination even when you were inebriated was… impressive.”

Which tells Bucky that the start of the story is not here, but its middle probably began when Bucky woke up in his bed today feeling like a meteor shower happened in his brain and the world’s ashes had fallen into his mouth. Also, the meteor shower was still happening in his stomach.

“Wakey wakey, Buck,” Steve had said, handing him an aspirin and a glass of water.

“You are all that’s right with the world, Rogers.”

“I know it’s bad when you start getting all complimentary on me. You should call Sam and thank him for getting you home in one piece, by the way.”

“ _No_ ,” he’d moaned. “I don’t want to owe Sam any favors. He’s going to make me clean cages— _raaargh_ , do you have to.”

Steve had opened the blinds, grinning at him like the cheeky shit he was.

“Consider the light and the promise of cleaning out Redwing’s cage incentive for not getting shitfaced when I’m not around to make sure you don’t pick fights with people, which is what Sam said you did.”

“I don’t pick fights; that’s you.”

“What I do isn’t fighting, it’s standing up for my principles.” Bucky snorted and buried his head in the pillow, which smelled like Steve’s weird cucumber melon shampoo. “Sam said you took it outside with some guy he’d never seen before and he rescued you when he realized the noise were not actually happy noises. And that you’d yelled that you would continue hashing it out by the plum stand, but Sam thinks he probably got you far away enough from the guy that he couldn’t hear you, so you should also thank him for that.”

Fast-forward a little bit, and Bucky is now thinking, _That’s one less thing I have to thank Sam for_. He’s still staring dumbly at Tall, Dark and Murderous, so he decides to do the proper thing and apologize.

“Look, I’m sorry if I offended you last night—if my friend’s telling the truth then I guess I kind of picked a fight with you when I was really drunk? I didn’t mean anything I said. And if it was just a fight I decided to pick because drunk me has his brain in his… nowhere, I guess, then you win and I’m also sorry for making your night less enjoyable. I’m just sorry. For whatever I did.” When the guy doesn’t kick him, Bucky stands up and dusts himself off. He reaches out a hand. “Hi, I’m Bucky. I don’t think we’ve met properly. You from around here?”

The guy takes it. His handshake is nice and firm.

“My name is T’Challa. I accept your apology, although perhaps I should be the one apologizing. Where I come from a fight does not stop until one party surrenders, loses consciousness, or dies, and you as good as ran away last night. In my home country I would be expected to track you down and finish what we started—it’s how young people build strength. But maybe that is not so common here. So I _am_ sorry if I ruined your day.”

“It’s all good. I’m fine. Nothing’s broken,” Bucky says reassuringly. T’Challa narrows his eyes.

“Although you did insult my father.”

“I did _what_? I’m sorry. Fuck! That’s not good; I don’t even know you _or_ your father. I’m sure he’s an extremely respectable man who does great things and is a real good role model. Look, I really am sorry—but, just out of curiosity, what did I say?”

“When I first refused to fight you, you said my father was probably a ‘meaty pantaloon-head’.”

“What is a meaty pantaloon-head,” Bucky mutters to himself.

“I don’t know. But it sounds insulting.”

“Damn, it does. I should make it up to you. Plum?” He offers one to T’Challa, who takes it. “You know what, let me take you out to lunch. I’m a local, I know some of the best places around. How ‘bout it? My treat.”

He turns the grin on T’Challa, the one that makes girls start playing with their hair and Steve roll his eyes and go along with whatever he’s saying anyway. He knows exactly what it’s made of: kick-ass jawline, check; attractively cocky twist of the mouth, check; eyes so blue today’s sky should be jealous, check. T’Challa smiles back, a little crooked, strangely reserved. Bucky would call it adorable if he didn’t know that face had an Avenging Angel Ready to Smite setting.

“That sounds good,” T’Challa says.

So life gives Bucky the entire month’s pick of lemons every time, but that just makes more lemonade. Today on the Barnes show: how to turn getting punched in the face into a lunch date with a total stud by Bucky Barnes, Smoothest Operator in Brooklyn.

* * *

“So how long are you here for?” Bucky asks when T’Challa has an OddFellows cone in his hands and is about to taste some of the best ice cream in his life. He’d liked Grimaldi’s pizza, and Bucky had liked watching him roll the slices up like little burritos, liked the happy little noise he made after the first bite, liked the way he was really nice to the server and insisted on leaving his own tip for her after Bucky explained the tipping system. Bucky had liked what he had to say about hiking through jungles in his home country and how his father bought him a ton of Disney movies when T’Challa had gone nuts about Mulan; Bucky liked that T’Challa thought Brooklyn was colorful and exotic and alive, that he said he’d heard people singing in a tavern and wanted to come sing along.

“Two more weeks. My father has some business to take care of here.” T’Challa licks his ice cream cone and his eyebrows go up, his eyes widen. The last of the day’s light burns golden, brushing the tops of T’Challa’s cheeks with luster.

“So, a vacation for you then?”

“You could say that,” T’Challa says. His voice is velvety and soothing; goes well with the ice cream and the weather, which has not stopped being perfect. “This is delicious. Thai iced tea—I would have never thought of it.”

“Me neither. God, my best friend Steve and me, we’re obsessed with this place; we just come here all the time to look at the new flavors and they never stop coming up with more crazy good stuff. So if you’re here two more weeks…”

“I can try at least fourteen.”

“Now, ‘at least’ is the key phrase here,” Bucky says. “You think you could squeeze in twenty-eight?”

“Perhaps. I would need someone to check whether or not I have fulfilled my goal.”

Again, he smiles at Bucky briefly, his glance ever so slightly sly, before getting back to his ice cream. It’s a tiny little quirk of heinously full lips and Bucky is a fucking goner. He digs into his own cone, watching T’Challa from the corner of his eye because he didn’t just bring him here for the really good ice cream—he feels shady about it, but hey, his ulterior motives will (hopefully) lead to a good time for all involved. It doesn’t take long before Bucky thinks, _there it is_ , as he spots an orangey smear next to T’Challa’s mouth. Steve calls him out on cheesy moves, but Bucky loves them _because_ people always know what’s up and play along anyway. There’s a kind of complicity.

“You’ve got a little something there,” he says, low and only a little bit husky, bringing up his thumb to the smear and wiping it away. He looks at his own thumb while he does it, not daring to look up until he’s done; when he does look up he meets T’Challa’s eyes, bright and knowing under the shadows of his long eyelashes. Bucky swallows and asks, more casually, “So you’ve got a number I can text? In case you want to come throw down in front of a Duane Reade or something.”

“I look forward to fighting you when you aren’t recovering from drunkenness and you’re not taken by surprise,” says T’Challa as he puts a number in Bucky’s phone. He saves it as Worthy Opponent, which makes Bucky laugh. When T’Challa gives his phone to Bucky, he saves his number as the same thing.

“Me too. Hangovers really throw me off my game.”

 _Be home early tonight, Buck,_ says a text from Steve. _Remember the two-night rule_.

“Two-night rule?” T’Challa asks when Bucky reads the text aloud.

“None of us—Steve, Sam, me—are allowed to get fucked up two nights in a row. We’re all housemates, and I gotta say that if the rule didn’t exist we’d probably be in a lot of trouble, honestly. Steve came up with it. He’s smart like that.”

“Sounds wise. Especially considering the way you acted the other night.”

Bucky chuckles. “If it wasn’t for how I acted, we wouldn’t be here now. That’d be a real shame.”

“Ah, that would.”

T’Challa is smirking a little now, and Bucky wants to kiss it off his face. But something about his voice and how he treated the server and the fact that they met by punching each other makes him want to play the long game. Makes him want to play for keeps, which he knows is a terrible idea when T’Challa’s here for two weeks and Bucky’s here forever, but the twenty-first century has Skype.

“Hey,” he says. “What about I walk you back to where you’re staying? Steve’s probably pacing at home like the mother hen he is, and I wanna put him out of his misery.”

“Yes, I would like that,” T’Challa says.

When he gets home, Steve is sitting on the couch with the TV off and a sketchbook open on his lap. The sketch is a half-finished one of Natasha’s face, smiling softly up at Steve with her hair blowing back.

“You gonna give that to her?”

“Maybe. I’m thinking of making a series. I did Sam and Wanda,” Steve says, shading in Natasha’s earlobe.

“But not me,” Bucky teases.

“Saving you for last.” Then Steve looks up and sees Bucky’s face. The way it’s throbbing, Bucky’s pretty sure T’Challa gave him a hell of a black eye. It feels like a weird kind of déjà vu with their positions reversed; Bucky beat up and cheeky about it, Steve upset with concern. God, Bucky loves Steve so goddamn much. “Buck, what happened?”

“Oh, I ran into the guy I got into a fight with last night.”

“Hang on. I’ll get you some ice,” Steve says, getting off the couch and walking briskly to the kitchen. When Steve sits down to press a pack of frozen peas to his face—“Shit, we ran out of ice again!”—Bucky sits back and closes his eyes, smiling.

“What are you smiling about?”

His phone feels warm in his pocket. Bucky thinks of Worthy Opponent’s warm dark eyes.

“Nah,” he says. “I just had a good day.”

* * *

They never get to throw down in front of a Duane Reade. They do, however, throw down at various other locations, the latest of which is Central Park, a week into T’Challa’s two-week stay. It’s even warmer today than all the other days and as they circle each other, Bucky shucks off his jacket and his glove, letting them fall on the grass. The light glints off his prosthetic arm.

“So that is why you protect your left arm,” T’Challa says. “I thought it was some kind of injury but I thought it would be rude to ask.”

“It was some kind of injury once. Isn’t anymore,” Bucky replies, and lunges.

Fighting T’Challa now is both easier and harder at the same time; easier, because Bucky’s got a read on T’Challa’s patterns now, and harder, because T’Challa’s got a read on his. So when T’Challa grabs him Bucky knows to dodge the two kicks that follow but isn’t quite fast enough to avoid the second one; half the damage dealt is still damage dealt.

Bucky has to hone into the fight with the kind of focus only Natasha demands usually, and he avoids getting decked in the throat narrowly and gets an elbow to the face instead, manages to get a hook and uppercut in, which T’Challa shakes off without even blinking. Just gets another hit in. His punches come out of nowhere and Bucky feels his blood burn when he tries to intercept each one, never knowing where T’Challa will choose to try to hit him next.

He does, however, know how T’Challa builds momentum; knows when a series of jabs and strikes will escalate into a jumping kick, and halts that in its track, disrupts it with a low elbow and gets slammed into a tree for his trouble. His brain, for a split second, somehow zeroes in on the heat of T’Challa’s palm on his flesh shoulder as he is pushed down, and he glances up to catch T’Challa’s eyes locked on his before he thrusts out a hand and flips him over, holds him down.

Bucky counts out loud to ten.

“You went easy on me,” he accuses when he rolls on the ground to catch his breath. “Was it the arm? It was the arm, wasn’t it. Don’t do that. I was fighting you with it before, doesn’t mean I can’t do it now just because you can see what it is.”

“No, no, no. I was thinking of the miso cherry flavor.” T’Challa turns to smile at him, beautiful in the soft grass. Bucky’s breath catches in his throat. “And, if you don’t mind telling me about it, I want to know the story behind the arm.”

“Come on, then,” he says, getting up and grabbing T’Challa’s hand, pulling him up. “Let’s get some miso cherry. I’ll tell you on the way.”

Bucky goes through the easy parts all the way to the subway: his current gig as an instructor in Natasha’s gym-slash-dojo-slash-air-conditioned-fight-club, meeting Sam in counseling, getting them both to move in with him and Steve. Talks about Natasha’s flawless technique and how she can think up five new ways to kill someone before breakfast, talks about Sam running circles round him, about leaving home (Steve) and coming home (to Steve). Then they’re standing pressed against each other on the train, T’Challa’s arm a line of heat against his own, and Bucky takes a deep breath.

“So that was how I got here, kind of,” he says. “That’s what I tell most people if they ask. But you wanted to know about the arm, and I wanna tell you. So let me tell you.” He fiddles with the zipper on his jacket, looks at the pendant T’Challa wears around his neck, memorizes its almost-point and traces the length of the black cord with his eyes. “I was part of Delta Force—it’s a Special Ops unit the government doesn’t even officially recognize, which I still sounds like something out of a goddamn movie to me—and we had this… this mission. The details don’t matter. They’re classified anyway. And you know how a guy can drive a car his whole life and it only takes on stroke of bad luck to total his car with him in it? Yeah. It only took me one stroke of bad luck.”

T’Challa shifts a little bit so he can kind of face Bucky. Bucky takes several deep breaths and thinks of Sam’s voice, of Steve’s hand on his shoulder, Natasha leaning back beside him with the same look on her pale face, centering himself by looking at the light pooling in T’Challa’s eyes.

“I guess I got my stroke of good luck after that. They didn’t kill me; they took me and this one other guy hostage. Some,” he gulps, “torture and one less arm later, Delta Force came in and got us out. So, you know. I was lucky. I’m a pretty lucky guy. I lived through it, and the torture scrambled my brains enough that they just decided to honorably discharge me instead of putting me back out there. Came home. Found out Steve’s trying to make a change in the mayor’s office. Fought Natasha once and got offered the job teaching Krav Maga, boxing, whatever. Then found out Natasha works with Steve, and they knew some tech wiz who could make me an arm because he was bored or something.”

He clenches and unclenches his fist.

“Pretty awesome, huh?”

“It is impressive.” T’Challa looks at the metal arm admiringly. “Thank you. For sharing this with me.”

Bucky doesn’t smile. It’s not an easy story to tell, but he feels it in his gut that he’s still a good judge of character. He wants T’Challa to know the story; this guy can match him blow for blow and he is excited for cherry miso ice cream and he lets Bucky walk him to a fancy hotel with an amused look in his eye. His best learning aid when it came to English had been Disney’s Mulan. He would probably get along with Steve. A week and T’Challa’s already got the faces in the background fading even further away.

“You’re welcome. I guess it’s easier for me to build relationships with people I’ve duked it out with, and only a real specific kind of person has that in common with me—Tasha’s a shining example—so if you don’t mind being asked, what’s your story?”

T’Challa chuckles, looking upwards. “My story?”

“If you think I can handle it.”

In response, T’Challa huffs quietly.

“My story is simple,” T’Challa says. “I grew up at a time when Wakanda was planning to open up to the world again… hence the Disney films. But my father carries a mantle that has been passed down my family for generations… an important one, which I will inherit when he passes away. He trained me for it. In my adolescence I was carried away by the myth of the invincible warrior. Of the hero. The protector. My father made me the finest fighter in the country. But he could not have prepared me for the situations where I had to use the skills I learned from him.”

For a long moment he is quiet. Outside, the sky blushes over buildings shrouded in blue gloom. Little yellow pinpricks show signs of life, blinking on and off, stamping winking patterns in the condensing darkness. Codeless. A transmission without a message. Bucky watches the evening’s shadows dance on T’Challa’s skin as the train keeps going, going, going.

“In tribe wars, it is not just a matter of stopping the battle. It is deciding whom you have to stop. Whom you can save. Not just for the sake of one life but for all of them. The fighting is always the easy part. The hard part… I was only assisting my father and yet I felt like some part of my soul had been torn apart. In my nightmares I could taste blood in my mouth—blood that was not mine.”

The train stops. He thinks of going on his fifth mission with the weary resignation to the fact that he could not choose who to kill, knowing that he was the gun in a purposeful hand. He never knew what it felt like to be the one holding it. T’Challa’s head is bowed, the ease and sunshine in his demeanor gone with the sunlight. When they step off, Bucky squeezes T’Challa’s hand; this time it doesn’t feel like a move, just comfort between two people who understand each other.

“Hey.” He pulls T’Challa gently behind a steel beam. “Since you seem like a guy who’s got his head together no matter what, I bet that a lot of good calls were made and you always tried to do the right thing. You feel bad about anything you’ve done?”

T’Challa looks up. The lights overhead flicker, and dark shadows quiver under his jaw, beside his nose.

“No, I do not regret any of the choices I have ever made.”

“Damn,” Bucky murmurs, trapped and happy where he is. “Whoever was calling the shots up the chain of command for my unit… hope it was someone like you.”

At this T’Challa’s eyes widen fractionally, only visible because Bucky is close, so close, he can see every individual eyelash, can outline the curve of T’Challa’s mouth with his eyes. For a few unbelievable shuddering seconds Bucky lets himself do nothing but look.

“This is taking far too long,” T’Challa growls incredulously, pressing Bucky against steel and following that up by kissing him. Bucky had imagined one of them would eventually give in during a fight; that he’d get thrown to the grown and ravaged accordingly. This is nothing like that. T’Challa kisses him slowly, deeply, pulling back now and again just to make Bucky tug him back in, gone on the taste of him and the lingering warmth. He grazes T’Challa’s bottom lip with his teeth and licks into the roof of his mouth and is rewarded with a muffled groan.

“Miso cherry,” Bucky reminds him when he tries to catch his breath and wrestle his brain back online. “Can we do this again after the miso cherry?”

“Why would I refuse?” T’Challa asks back, and Bucky has to stop himself from whimpering.

 _code 4_ , he texts. _i aint evictin anyone but if youre not crashing at anyones you better know what you signed up for_

 _Nice. I’ll be at Nat’s if you need me. Also, be a gentleman and make breakfast in the morning. There’s pasta you can reheat in the fridge. Don’t burn anything down,_ is Steve’s reply.

Not long after, he gets Natasha’s dryly amused _Romanogers Taco Night, brought to u by James Barnes’ little Bucky_ and a three-drop emoji.

 _thx steve,_ he sends back to Steve. To Natasha, he deigns only to say, _please dont say little bucky ever again_

From Sam, he gets radio silence. Bucky shrugs and puts his phone back in his pocket so he can hold the hell out of T’Challa’s hand.

* * *

When Sam walks in on Bucky and T’Challa curled into each other in a darkened apartment as they watch Mulan on the couch, Bucky doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or not by the fact that they’re not even doing anything filthy; they’re just watching an animated Chinese girl kick ass and take names, and also give her CO a goddamn sexuality crisis. (Attagirl.)

“ _Jesus H_ , the _one_ day my phone dies and I forget my charger at home, you drop a Code Four on my unsuspecting ass!”

Sam looks at them again.

“This isn’t even a Code Four! What are you making me and Steve leave _for_ ,” he gripes.

“Then stay,” T’Challa says simply and a little bit tetchily, placing a possessive arm conspicuously around Bucky’s shoulders. His tone sends chills erupting across Bucky’s skin.

Sam gapes at him, looking incredibly impressed. Bucky has a feeling that he’s going to hear lots of ‘too good for the likes of _you_ ’ comments regarding this from now on. And then Sam kind of squints. And squints some more. Bucky squirms in T’Challa’s arms as Sam stares at them and _does not leave_.

“Hold on a second,” says Sam, as he goes to the counter. He grabs something and throws it at Bucky; it his him on the head. Bucky reaches for it and brings it in front of him so he can see what the object is. It’s today’s newspaper. On the front page he sees the headline _Wakandan king and crown prince to finalize UN treaty this week_. Above that there’s a picture of a distinguished black man standing in the UN Headquarters. Next to him—looking regal and majestic in a well-cut black suit—is unmistakably T’Challa.

Bucky says (in a voice that’s pretty even despite the overwhelming feeling of wanting to hide under the couch forever), “Please tell me you’re actually the king’s bodyguard and I didn’t actually insult the king of a foreign country and start a drunken fight with its crown prince.”

“I can tell you no such thing,” T’Challa responds. “I am an honest man.”

Why is his life the most drawn-out game of Good News, Bad News?

“This can’t be happening. You’re a _prince?_ ” Bucky groans.

T’Challa laughs, the sound so deep and rich that Bucky just wants to drown in it, to disappear. He ducks his head against the place where Bucky’s shoulder meets his neck and transfers the vibrations of his laughter to Bucky’s body so he thrums pleasantly with them. He feels mortified. He feels jubilant.

“I am,” Prince T’Challa of Wakanda confirms.

“Hold up, hold up. Does that make Bucky Cinderella?” Sam chimes.

“I’ve seen the film. The dress would bring out your eyes.”

“You know it would,” Bucky responds gamely. This he can work with. This he can use to recover like a goddamn champ. “And it would look so good on the floor.”

Sam walks to the door, brandishing a portable charger. “Gross, did not need to hear that, my poor ears. Got what I came for. Don’t break anything, Barnes; I’ve got my eye on you.”

He proceeds to make the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture with two fingers, and Bucky flings one of Steve’s fluffy fruit-shaped cushions at him.

“Get outta here,” he yells after Sam’s back, which disappears out the door. Then he turns to T’Challa, who’s looking at him cautiously, like he’s waiting for Bucky to chew him out. “So you wanna tell me why you didn’t enlighten me about your status as _Crown Prince_ , Your Highness?”

“I did not want to be ‘Your Highness’ with you. I wanted to be T’Challa,” he says softly, more hesitant than he has any right to be. Bucky leans in close with T’Challa still looking at him and decides to break out the sappy lines, because if there was ever a moment in his life that called for sappy lines this one is it.

“Whatever you want, that’s the way it’s going to be,” he says. “Not because I’m bowing down to a prince. Because I like T’Challa and I wanna see him smile because of me.”

On the TV screen, the Chinese army sings about a girl worth fighting for.

Bucky pushes him down gently on the couch and kisses T’Challa with an open mouth until they’re both making needy little noises, one of T’Challa’s hands fisted forcefully in the fabric of Bucky’s shirt and the other combing through his long hair, sending shivers through him. Bucky kisses down the line of his jaw, chases the traces of cherry miso ice cream on the corners of his mouth.

“When you need a vacation, you must tell me. I will fly you out.” T’Challa gasps minutely when Bucky gets his mouth on his collarbone. “Then we can, ah, do this in a palace.”

 _Holy fuck_ , Bucky thinks, his mind blank except for the slightly salty taste of T’Challa’s skin, the sound of his hitching breaths. Bucky wants to say, _this can’t be real_ or _what kind of insane luck is this and how did this happen to me_ or _this better not be a fucking dream_. But, of course, he does not say any of those things.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says instead, low and full of promise, reaching for the remote and turning off the TV. Sorry, Mulan—Bucky will watch you save the emperor some other time.

He’s got a prince to please.


End file.
